


Abundance

by gogollescent



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:00:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gogollescent/pseuds/gogollescent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She rested her hands on the curve of her stomach, thumbs edging up to hide beneath her soft and swollen breasts; the fall of her long hair threw reddish shade across one cheek. Her shadow on the snow was blue as all the watchful sky.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abundance

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in a vaguely defined AU where Sansa married Willas, and Margaery was betrothed to Tommen, but not married to him, after Joffrey's death.

It was a year before Margaery saw her again, which in truth was sooner than she might have wished. Her visit home had the feeling of a tactical retreat, however frequently her father assured her that Ser Kevan’s good graces were worth more than the court’s fickle attention, and Margaery bore it for the upset it was. But she was glad of the opportunity to see Highgarden while the snows were only flurries, and the rosebushes were laden with second blooms of white; and she was glad to see Sansa, thirteen now and six months pregnant, carrying high and dressed in greens that darkened her light eyes.

Willas, it was obvious, liked her, as Margaery had been sure he would. He pressed his ear to her stomach with anxious regularity, his expression determined, wistful, the face of a man who knew the value of forgetting, if it meant that the future was assured. In private he told Margaery that he wished he had taken more care—Sansa was so young, more a child than a mother, though she often spoke of her desire for a babe. He quietly admitted that he thought she had lied to him about her bleeding time, to coax him to her bed while she was fertile. Margaery listened, and assured him that the Sansa she knew had never been so devious. She pointed out that his young wife had better hips than women twice her age. A girl, perhaps; but a girl shaped by magnanimous gods.

“Do you think so,” said Willas, with rare irony.

"Lady Catelyn bore five children without trouble," Margaery replied—thinking it was sad, that those sweet babes should be no more than proof of purchase now: as though Sansa were a garden, the earth enriched by death.

It was true that you could hardly see the figure that had been. Hips or no hips, Sansa gravid looked unfinished, not like the sculpted maid of memory. Every limb was coltish lean, and the dome of her belly made an unkind foil for the sharp line of her wrists. Perversely, it stirred a sentiment in Margaery that she had never seriously contemplated when Sansa slept in her bed at King’s Landing. Margaery was not a creature of envious lusts, unlike the queen who had since sent her home. She had always preferred the estate she was born to, though she would serve her father’s interests, and her brother’s. It was the sight of Sansa in Highgarden, with embroidered roses on her cloth-of-gold habit, Margaery’s niece or nephew in her belly, that tugged at Margaery’s heart. She could so easily imagine a world in which Sansa had been there all along.

She tried not to dwell on it. Soon enough she would be back at the capital, beside her king. Sansa was not much with her, being occupied, it seemed, learning the duties of the lady of Highgarden, and familiarizing herself with the household. But one crystalline morning found them walking together through a grove of fig trees buttressed with old snow—the sky as blue and featureless as Sansa’s steady gaze—and with a hound following on their heels that Margaery didn’t know: no doubt whelped some time after she rode out to marry Joff. It was spotted with red, like roses on a snowy field. Sansa stopped now and then and made it sit, or roll over, though it disliked the frozen ground; she would reward it with her hand on its ribs or a word in its ear, too soft for Margaery to guess, either of which made the dog sigh like a dying thing. Its dark eyes one appeal. “Did Willas—” she began; and Sansa said yes, she was a gift.

Willas had always been clever.

"I named her Cat," Sansa said.

Margaery laughed. “Does she catch rats?”

Sansa smiled, an interior sort of grin. “I’ve never really believed that there were rats here.”

The bitch let Margaery rub her ears, but bounded away before she could attempt to liberate a tick. “Jumpy,” Sansa observed, standing. She rested her hands on the curve of her stomach, thumbs edging up to hide beneath her soft and swollen breasts; the fall of her long hair threw reddish shade across one cheek. Her shadow on the snow was blue as all the watchful sky. Margaery would have liked to remove the cloak from her back, to unlace her vest and bodice, to peel her there in the open like a rose too early shucked. She had done that, as a child—picked furled buds; and wrenched apart the petals, one by one.


End file.
